Red Notice: A True Story Of High Finance, Murder, And One Man's Fight For Justice, Browder - B +

                                               Thanks to Mike Connell and Wendell Erwin for recommending this superb book. I generally avoid stories of Russian perfidy and memoirs, but this is very well written, tells a tale that sounds like a fictional thriller and isn't filled with too many self-serving justifications. Browder is an Anglo-American investor with a deep family connection to the countries of eastern Europe. He managed to translate that connection into a ground-floor, early 90's business opportunity in Moscow. He formed Hermitage Capital in order to invest in the privatization of Russia. He was wildly successful and even managed to survive the 90% drop in Russian markets after the 1999 sovereign default. He had some luck exposing thievery at Gazprom and decided to take on the oligarchs. His interests were aligned with Putin's until 2004, when Putin imprisoned the owners of Lukoil, and the author contends, started lining his pockets with the cooperation of the oligarchs. A year later, Browder was kicked out of Russia. Next came a raid on his Moscow office and charges of tax evasion. His lawyer Serge Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail and both Browder and the deceased Magnitsky were convicted in absentia. The trial and convictions were right out of the 1930's and were deplored around the world. Interpol wouldn't arrest Browder, the European Parliament criticized the Russians and the US passed the Magnitsky Act, blacklisting the  Russians behind Magnitsky's death. Browder is now a human rights activist based in his hometown of London.

Racing The Devil, Todd - B

                                               This series is as good as it gets, in taking the reader to a different time and place: rural England immediately after the Great War.  It is a quiet time of despair as all struggle with the consequences of the violence.  Our lead character is, of course, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge. He wrestles with his ghosts from the trenches, as do all who survived the western front. This book is specifically about survivors, and one in particular who happens to be a deserter and ultimately, a serial killer. Rutledge works the case as hard as any we've seen. He persists and pulls together the pieces to convict his man on a pretty long investigation in the southeast of the country.

The Vanquished: Why The First World War Failed To End, Gerwarth - B

                                               "Europe's violent transition from world war to chaotic peace is the subject of this book." The focus is on the losing side: the Romanov, Hapsburg, Ottoman and Hohenzollern Empires, as well as Greece and Italy. "Post-war Europe...was the most violent place on the planet." The author compares the devastation of 1918-23 to the Thirty Years War as millions died in the continuing armed conflict. The wars were inter-sectional battles within old empires, civil wars and revolutions. From Finland south to Turkey, war continued; Europe remained in flames.
                                                The failure of Russia's war led to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty. The decision of Kerensky's government to continue fighting smoothed the way for Lenin and Russia's withdrawal from hostilities by the end of 1917.  Two days after the 1918 Armistice was signed by Germany and the Entente powers, the Russians launched an attack in an attempt to recover some of what they had lost at Brest-Litovsk. "For most of 1919 and 1920 the western borderlands experienced a three-way struggle involving the Bolsheviks, the Whites and a host of nationalist movements.." The incredibly brutal war trickled to an end in 1922 as the heart of the former Russian Empire lay in ruins.  Between the revolution and the establishment of the USSR in 1922, an estimated 10 million people had died in Russia.
                                               Revolution came to Germany when the Kaiser abdicated in November, 1918. However, in elections the following January, the forces of moderation prevailed, as they did in Austria in February.  In Bulgaria and in Constantinople, centrists took control. The hope of all the defeated powers was for a moderate peace.  "Liberal democracy, which had failed to come into existence in 1848, had finally emerged triumphant."
                                               The communists attempted putsches in Berlin, Munich, Spain, Italy, and Hungary. In Germany, the centrist Weimar Republic held them off. Elsewhere, right-wing  forces violently put down the Reds. Europe's first red scare had passed, although a very real fear of Bolshevism would dominate Europe for decades.
                                              The Paris Peace Conference focused on the lands of the defeated powers. "As the continental empires disintegrated, ten new nation states emerged from the ruins: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Turkey. " As the conference took place, there was endless fighting in the lands of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire as various nationalities asserted their statehood. The Poles and Russia fought a war from 1919-21.  The losing Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Bulgarians and Ottomans did not negotiate in Paris. Terms were dictated on a take it or leave it basis. Very few of Wilson's Fourteen Points, particularly the concept of national self-determination, found their way into the treaties imposed by the Allies. Many of the new states, in particular Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, were nationality smash-ups that guaranteed future conflicts. "Although Europe's territorial reorganization in 1918-19 actually halved the total number of people deemed minorities,.....the new successor states initially had no legal framework in place to secure their rights."
                                            The last scene of violence and genocide was in Anatolia, the Turkish heartland, whose Aegean coast had substantial Greek Christian minorities. Greece decided a land-grab should be its reward for siding with the Allies. The Greeks advanced east from  Smyrna (Izmir today) and for three years committed atrocities against the majority Muslim population. In 1922, the Turks evicted them. Over a million Anatolian Christians left for Greece and approximately 400,000 Muslims in Greece moved to Turkey.
                                             To a great extent, the fighting after the war presaged the disaster that would follow twenty-years later. Europe's reprieve was brief.
                                             

The Trespasser, French - B

                                               Tana French is the author of 'The Dublin Murder Squad' series, of which this is the sixth entry.  Unlike any police procedural series that I've come across in the last thirty years, this one isn't keyed into continuing characters. So, unlike the '87th precinct' series or the Adam Dalgleish stories, these tales are about the process and the place, Dublin.
                                                Here, our lead 'D' is the only woman currently in the squad, is of mixed race and who feels as if the world is stacked against her. She and her partner catch a case and immediately conclude that there may be some police corruption a few layers deep. The two most senior men in the squad obsequiously offer their help. Are they trying to help or hinder?
                                              Antoinette Conway cannot figure out what to do with Breslin and McCann and runs the case with one eye on the facts and one on the two older men.  They stymie her, insult her and ostracize her, but she forges ahead,  unearths a very surprising set of facts, and catches her perpetrator. The novel is bit long, but well-paced, and great on Dublin street talk.

The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, Cozzens - B

                                               This is the history of what inevitably had to happen as millions poured into the US from Europe. The pre-ordained outcome, though, remains a shame and a painful read.  The author is a noted historian, and, here he tells the woeful tale of the three decades from the middle of the Civil War to the closing of the frontier in 1890. He opens with the 1863 meeting of ten Indian chiefs with Lincoln at the White House. The Cheyenne Lean Bear represented the Indians.  Lincoln pledged peace and gave each Indian a medal. A year later, Lean Bear approached men under the command of Col. John Chivington in Colorado with the medal in his hand. At thirty yards, the militia opened fire and killed him before slaughtering many of his tribe.
                                               Cozzens states that this is his attempt to set the record straight. For eighty years, the Indians were portrayed in history and pop culture as vicious evildoers fighting the all American pioneers and soldiers. Then, since 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' in 1970, the story has been entirely about the noble savage as victim.  "A deeper understanding of all parties to the conflict, better addresses the many myths, misconceptions, and falsehoods surrounding the Indian Wars."
                                               The Great Plains were perceived to be a vast, uninhabitable wasteland that Americans only needed to pass through on the way to the coast. They were inhabited mostly by tribes that had come from the east. In no way were the Indians unified or united. They spent much of their time fighting each other. Within each tribe, there were peace and war factions. Into their homeland in the 1840's, 50's and 60's came a trickle and then a torrent of migrants. The government's strategic goal became settling Indians on reservations and keeping them away from settlers and wagon trains. The end of the Civil War saw William T. Sherman in charge of the US Army on the frontier. The army he had to preserve the peace was totally incapable of doing so. It was small and squeezed smaller each year by Congress. The pay was horrible and the training non-existent. The citizen-soldier of the Civil War was no more. The US Army consisted of lowlife drunks, often incapable of riding a horse or shooting a rifle.
                                                 The first fighting in the post-war era was in the Bighorn territories. White men rushed in after gold. However, the Lakota Sioux, under Red Cloud, put up  a fierce resistance and wiped out the invading columns. A hurried treaty ceded them much of today's South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.  The US then tried to set up  a comprehensive treaty system called the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The Indians did not understand what they agreed to, and the US was duplicitous at best. Sherman knew the treaty meant only a slight deferment of hostilities. When the inevitable atrocities by both sides escalated, Sherman ordered the newly-arrived Phil Sheridan to drive the Cheyenne and Arapaho from Kansas.  By the summer of 1869, the tribes had been decimated or decided to move north and join forces with the Lakota Sioux. When Grant took office, he initiated a peace policy and replaced many Indian Bureau commissioners with Quakers and reliable military officers.  Peace held in the north, although it must be admitted that there were few white intrusions on the northern plains.  The Comanches and Texans continued to war with each other, but in the early 1870's they reached an uneasy and tentative peace.
                                                 Peace eventually ended because of the slaughter of the buffalo. Buffalo hides became valuable and, in the first half of the decade, almost four million buffalo hides were shipped east. On the reservations, the Indians drank to excess, lost their skills and were frequently cheated. This toxic mix blew up into the Red River War in 1874. Within a year, the tribes of the southern plains were conquered. The Comanche, Kiowa and Arapaho would raid no more. Further west, the Army faced the best-armed and most skillful guerrilla warriors they ever would fight - the Apaches. Some Apaches accepted reservation life, but many refused. Among those who continued to roam was a mercurial medicine man named Geronimo.
                                                In the north, different Sioux bands under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were busy pushing the Crow further into the mountains and off the plains. They dominated the western reaches of the Dakotas and both the Wyoming and Montana territories. They viewed the white man as a nuisance off to the east. That all changed with the ambitions of the Northern Pacific Railway to pierce their lands. The Indians were able to stave off the railway, but could not stop the gold miners entering the Black Hills. The US was faced with a treaty that promised the Black Hills to the Sioux forever. The Sioux were willing to sell the Black Hills, but not at the price proffered. President Grant decided to evict them by force. The Indian Bureau manufactured tales of Indian perfidy in order to whip up public opinion. The 1876 campaign against the Sioux would lead to the most famous event in the history of the American West. Under General Terry, the army moved west into Bighorn territory.  The 7th Cavalry was commanded the volatile George Armstrong Custer, who regularly sent anonymous dispatches to the NY Herald, attempting to further burgeon his reputation. On Sunday, June 25th, Custer divided his forces and retained 221 men under his command. By 5:30 PM, they were no more. Although the Sioux and Cheyenne had won a  battle, they would pay a heavy price, for as never before, America was united against Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Lakota Sioux. The Army destroyed the Northern Cheyenne the following winter and pushed the remaining Sioux into northern Montana. Harassed and starved, the Sioux gave up: Crazy Horse surrendered in May of 1877 and Sitting Bull went to Canada. A few years later, a weary and hungry Sitting Bull surrendered to the US Army. The Great Sioux War was over.
                                               Further west, the Nez Perce, the Utes and the Apache all fell. In 1886, for the third and final time, Geronimo surrendered. The 1880's saw the final act of US treachery on the northern plains, when the government approved of white homesteading on the Sioux reservation. The  Rosebud, Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee reservations saw the last Indian insurrections, which the Army easily put down. "The Indian Wars for the American West were over."
                                             One of the most difficult aspects of reading this book has been the almost universal duplicity of the white men who dealt with the Indians. General Crook may hold prominence for saying he never made a promise to an Indian that he kept.  Promises were meaningless to the Americans who repeatedly killed defenseless women and children.  The most effective tactic the Army developed was the winter dawn attack on a sleeping campsite. All were fair game. There was no discernment about who was the enemy on those mornings. The Indians were deceived and mistreated into surrendering and joining the reservations.  Once there, they were more often than not starved by unscrupulous agents and traders. An elderly Sioux, who had witnessed the 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie and the 1890 slaughter at Wounded Knee, said "The government made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it." It is not a story to be proud of.
                                           

An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler, Fritzsche - B

                                               "This book is about the wartime experience of civilians, the often dubious parts they played in the war, and the ways they approached their neighbors and the groups persecuted by the Germans. The violence of the war was so extensive that people tried to contain it by separating themselves from the fate of others."
 In France in 1940, war led to an exodus as millions took to the roads, and more civilians than soldiers died in the weeks before France's surrender.  The overwhelming worry in French society was how long would the new order last? Vichy encouraged collaboration. In Paris, one had to live next to and with the Germans. The German occupation of France generally was considerably less terrifying than in the east. The French had to make decisions about "good" and "bad" Germans and how to manage their cooperation or collaboration.
                                                 By contrast, in Warsaw, "The keynote of the German occupation was the phrase repeated on legal notices: 'will be punished by death'. Nowhere else did the Germans use the death penalty as promiscuously as in Poland." "The victorious Nazis sought to destroy the Polish nation by tearing out the traces of Polish life in the annexed districts and by subjugating the Poles through harsh colonial-style rule in the occupied territories." The first genocide of the war was the elimination of the Polish elite.
                                                When the author turns to Operation Barbarossa, he embarks on a challenging but enlightening discourse. Smolensk is chosen as a focal point, as it was a crossroads on the way to Moscow and a place that featured significantly in 'War and Peace'. Per the author, Tolstoy's famous novel became the must-read  throughout Europe after the German invasion of Russia. Furthermore, in the fall of 1941, a Swiss Red Cross medical team spent a few months in Smolensk and one of it's members was a prolific diarist. Elsi Eichenberger's diary underscores the depth of hate, the pervasive beliefs, the detestation of Versailles, and the commitment to Hitler and Germany that pervaded the minds of the Wehrmacht men fighting to overcome Bolshevism. "Germans felt themselves to be protagonists in a racial struggle that justified merciless behavior toward the unarmed and weak and murderous action against Jews and other civilians."
                                                Throughout France, Germany and Poland, non-Jews stood by and watched as millions were herded off death. Absorbed by their own problems, likely anti-semitic to begin with and thankful that they were still alive,  the people of Europe witnessed violence, bloodshed and the treatment of their neighbors as something less than human. They took over their apartments, divided up their goods and moved on with survival.
                                                The second half of this book is what one reviewer called a 'reflection' on the war, and whenever a book turns philosophical, it tends to lose me. Clearly, Fritsche is a noted historian and a superb wordsmith.  The fact that it didn't work for me is not conclusive. It's thoughtful and very well-written.